'Pop-up' bus service to pilot route in Coolidge Corner

Matthew George wants to revolutionize how people get around Boston, and he wants to start in Coolidge Corner.

The Middlebury College alum is hoping to launch his “pop-up” bus service next month as a supplement to the MBTA buses and trains that already serve the area.

Bridj, the name of his company, compiles data of where people live and work and creates more direct bus routes to better get from point A to point B.

Initially, there will be three rather static routes on the Bridj system — one from Coolidge Corner to Harvard University, and another from Coolidge Corner to Kendall Square, as well as a service from Back Bay to Harvard — but as more users sign up, the system will automatically create new routes.

The service launches May 15, and after a month-long beta period, George expects a new route to be added to the system every week.

The essential component of Bridj is compiling travel data. The MBTA collects its own data, but it mainly identifies where passengers get on a train or bus, but not where they get off. Additionally, it’s hard to figure out how far people have to travel just to get to a station or stop.

That’s where Bridj comes in. Users input their home zip code and work zip code, and if enough people input the same data, a bus route is created.

“Because the system gets smarter with each new user, we can get progressively more granular, so we get smaller and smaller clusters of people, and connect them with smaller destination clusters,” he said.

Some of that location information is already in the Bridj system, since it scans social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter to find where people live and work, said George.

George got the idea for Bridj while in student government at Middlebury College in Vermont in 2011. He started looking at transportation issues at the college.

“I took the existing service and said, ‘Let’s make this more data-driven and hone in on where kids are actually from,’” he said.

Soon, his idea took off.

After he graduated college, George secured funding from a venture capital firm to help grow Bridj. By the next school year, the Bridj system will be in 40 different college campuses across the country.

The next logical step is getting into cities, which brings George to Boston, for his largest experiment yet.

“In cities, you’re moving hundreds of thousands of people into a very small area, and then taking them out again,” he said.

He pointed to Coolidge Corner as an example of this.

The two main transportation thoroughfares into Coolidge Corner are the #66 bus line, and the C Line, and George said both are “noticeably overcapacitated.”

Just as he mentioned that, a 66 bus passed by, with most, if not all, of the seats occupied at roughly 10 a.m.

While looking at data in the Boston area, George discovered that Coolidge Corner was one of the most stressed transportation nodes in the city.

He also noticed that traveling from Coolidge Corner to Kendall Square on the train took about 50 minutes, whereas driving only take about 20 minutes, give or take.

If the Bridj bus between those locations takes off, George said commuters would have a little more time on their hands.

“We’re giving people a little over an hour from their lives back each day,” he said.

Although the main Bridj commuter routes from Coolidge Corner to Kendall will never likely change much, George said new routes will be sprouting up all the time, wherever they see a demand.

Once a direct route is established, the driver will be able to divert from the route in order to avoid traffic congestion, said George, adding to the convenience of the system.

Also, the buses will have leather seats and tables, and offer wi-fi.

“For a dollar or two more than traditional transportation, we feel like we’re really moving the ball forward in what we’re able to offer consumers,” he said.

Demand so far has been high. George went online to find 300 users for the beta test, and thousands of people responded.

“What I would tell people, if they do want to see a route in their neighborhood, get everybody to at least put it into the system,” he said. “At least give us the data so we know where to put in the routes.”

George hopes to appeal to those who can’t access jobs because they’re not close to public transit, or those who can’t afford to use alternative transportation options such as Uber and Lyft.

Uber uses drivers who are circumventing the city licensing system, which has caused an issue in Brookline recently, as taxi owners are resisting a move from licenses to medallions because of the large down-payment necessary to own a medallion and the uncertainty of the current market.

That won’t be the case with Bridj, which would need a “jitney” license to operate.

Christopher Dempsey, a member of the Transportation Board, and the only person on the board to oppose the shift to medallions for taxi drivers, said the cost for a jitney license in Brookline is only $100.

The other difference between Bridj and services like Uber is that Bridj partners with Academy Coach, based out of Hoboken, N.J. Bridj has access to 4,000 buses from Academy. That means all the drivers for Bridj are professionals and are registered in Massachusetts. Uber and Lyft just use citizens as their drivers.

Initially, the cost of using Bridj will be between $3.50 to $8 per ride, but the high side of that scale is only for longer routes, such as those that travel to the Route 128 business corridor in Waltham. There will also be a discounted monthly pass, and George expects employers to heavily subsidize the expense of the service in order to get their employees to work faster.

George said his company is partnering with the Rt. 128 Business Council to provide transportation to and from the area. He said employers have enthusiastically embraced his idea.

“You always think something as big as public transit, or mass transit, or intercity transit, that ‘Somebody must have thought about this. There’s a reason we’re not doing this better.’ And then you realize there is no reason we’re not doing this better,” he said.

Although the initial goal is to address rush-hour traffic, George said Bridj will provide service throughout the day, eventually, including late-night service.

“What we think is really exciting is that it’s essentially starting in Coolidge Corner and in Brookline,” he said. “We expect that over the next three years, it will be an international system.”